Senator Gwin had said, in a speech delivered December 12, 1859, in the senate chamber, “I believe that the slave-holding states of this confederacy can establish a separate and independent government that will be impregnable to the assaults of all foreign enemies,” and had gone on to show why they should, and how they could, exist as a separate government. He had also said that if the southern states went out of the union “California would be found with the south;” but he was careful to expunge this and other similar remarks from the official report of his speech. It was intended for the senate and not for the ear of California; but it was wafted on the wings of newspaper gossip, and was known before either of the conventions met to choose a course for the future.
